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Japanese is a Japonic language associated with ridiculously unique people, interesting shows, and world-renowned video games. The language has two alphabets (hiragana and katakana, collectively called kana) and one expansive set of characters (kanji). It can sound a bit intimidating, but don’t be daunted by this; you have a choice of just how fluent you want to be. For my personal learning, I wish to be able to associate any set of characters with any other set of characters I want, so in Japanese, I work on nearly all of the combinations, both ways:

Associate the kanji with the kana

Associate the kanji with the romaji

Associate the kanji with the meaning

Associate the kana with the kanji

Associate the kana with the romaji

Associate the kana with the meaning (not actively worked on)

Associate the romaji with the kanji

Associate the romaji with the kana

Associate the romaji with the meaning

Associate the meaning with the kanji

Associate the meaning with the kana (not actively worked on)

Associate the meaning with the romaji

For example, associating the kanji with the meaning involves things like tying what the kanji looks like to the idea it represents, like the kanji for cat (猫) and a picture or story of a cat. Associating the kana with the romaji would be a simple task of learning which hiragana or katakana corresponds to which romaji letters. By now, I know the kana well enough to be able to skip the kana vs. romaji combinations and treat them as if they were one, which cuts down on the separate matching that kana or romaji would make with kanji individually.

This form of learning gives me a solid foundation to understanding Japanese no matter its form or how it’s written to me, whereas – and there’s no harm in doing this if this is your preference – some people may choose to do this condensed version instead:

Associate the kanji with the meaning

Associate the meaning with the kanji

“But romaji is bad!”

Some people advise new learners to skip romaji. I absolutely do not recommend this. Being able to write Japanese in a form easily pronouncable and clear to non-Asians is a hugely useful skill.

I think the take-home idea of what people are trying to communicate when they say “don’t learn romaji” is this: don’t rely on only romaji to learn Japanese by, as kana and kanji are ridiculously important and 100% cannot be avoided if you truly wish for spoken as well as written fluency in the language. I do advise saving learning how to -write- kanji for really advanced learning, if even then, as even many Japanese can’t remember from scratch how to write many kanji, as shown in this video.

If you’re going to be reading a lot of Japanese material, the important focus is of course to learn how to recognize characters, not write them from scratch! Besides, unless you’re writing a job application in Japanese with no computer or outside help whatsoever, if you don’t know how to write a kanji, you can always just represent it with hiragana. While the Japanese can read their language in romaji, kana is of course preferred.

Don’t be afraid of the writing system. Besides, with so many resources available as well as so much interesting media, Japanese is a great language to learn, and learning the kanji gives you a fantastically solid head start if you want to learn Chinese later!

Memrise: Vocabulary building via flashcards. Used all the time during any stage of learning Japanese, or any other language, for that matter. Using Memrise is like using flashcards, but a lot more beneficial since it utilizes not just repetition, but spaced repetition. That means it checks how long ago you learned a word and reminds you to revisit the word at a time when you’re most likely to be about to forget it. It often has (user-created!) mnemonic devices to help aid the recall process even further. I wholeheartedly recommend Memrise to anyone who’s learning any language. You can even create your own deck to help other users practice! Here’s a detailed deck I made myself for Japanese that splits words into categories like godan verbs, na-adjectives, and more. 😀

Guide to Japanese: This guide is extremely helpful to me, and is the number one source I use to build my grammar.

Tanoshii Japanese: Tanoshii Japanese, while it’s a fantastic Japanese to English (and vice-versa) dictionary, also has hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary lessons, and will teach you kanji immediately before showing you some words containing the kanji you just learned! It also has extremely helpful games you can play, and you can tie your progress to your account. I absolutely recommend this site, as it’s basically somewhat of a Japanese-specific Memrise, catering specifically to ways that would help one test their hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary knowledge.

Tangorin: Like Tanoshii Japanese, Tangorin also serves as a great Japanese to English (and vice-versa) dictionary, and is incredibly helpful with the meanings of different kanji. Because of the extra features (and the more attractive interface), however, I like to use Tanoshii Japanese more often.

Hotarun: Like a hybrid of Tanoshii Japanese and Verbix, Hotarun will explain what a kanji means or conjugate verbs for you, among many other things!

The Japanese Page: Over at The Japanese Page, there’s a great section called Fast Track: 100 Grammar Points that is just glorious in jump-starting your Japanese grammar knowledge. It teaches you 100 short grammar snippets on how to use words like “about”, “for example”, “this”, “that”, “that over there”, and more.

PuniPuniJapan: PuniPuniJapan definitely wins points for being adorable. It’s a fabulously colorful website that really makes Japanese learning cute and fun, and it teaches vocabulary, phrases, and grammar for free.

Nihongo Ichiban: There are some grammar lessons here, and also some survival Japanese lessons if you just want to get your feet wet and no more. If you’re serious enough about Japanese to take the JLPT (general Japanese proficiency test) or BJT (business Japanese proficiency test), though, it also helpfully contains lists for vocabulary you’ll need to know for J5, J4, and so on.

Jonsay.co.uk: Like Daiu International, Jonsay has great vocabulary lists like this one for different categories such as computers, directions, and even the Japanese words for dinosaurs! They have vocabulary lists for other languages, too, not just Japanese.

Verbix: I use this verb conjugator for pretty much any language I’m learning!

Japanese Verb Conjugator: With a slightly easier to understand format than Verbix, this “Ultra Handy Japanese Verb Conjugator” is a great way to find out how to conjugate a Japanese verb if you’re at a loss! However, even though it has a prettier format than Verbix, the conjugations are automatically generated.

Whew. The past year has been a whirlwind of travel craziness, even moreso if you stretch it a bit further and count summer 2014. I’ve headed from the US to Norway, to England, Poland, and the Czech Republic, and back to Norway before flying back to the US, whereupon I took a detour to Puerto Rico over the winter, returned to Miami for spring break, and went to New York for the first time. Then, after moving three times since returning from Europe to the US and finishing my Bachelor’s in Computer Science in spring 2015 – along with meeting a whole lot of fun and interesting new people along the way – I sold or gave away most of my possessions, said “Bye” to the country I’ve lived in for ~22 years, and purchased a one-way ticket to Norway, but not before popping over to Colombia to see South America at least once before leaving the western hemisphere.

After spending only a week in Norway, I hopped over to the Netherlands where I had an absolute blast with old and new friends for about a month before going for my first time to Belgium. From Belgium, I bought a ticket to South Korea and commenced my teaching job here, learning a lot of Korean and about the country’s culture from one of its very own, small cities.

And now, in approximately one-and-a-half months, I’ll be on the move again. Where to this time? Well, first I will go around Korea to the places I haven’t seen yet but want to before I leave, such as Jeju Island, Daejeon, more of Seoul, the Demilitarized Zone (between North and South Korea), Gangwon province, Daegu, and more of Busan. After that, I will close out my apartment here in Gochang, say “See ya later!” to the friends I’ve made here, and head to…

Japan!

And I can say I’m quite excited! The destination is not so much of a surprise if you’re somewhat familiar with Asia’s geography, but it will be the first time I’ve set foot in a place where so much of the media I’ve watched and played over the years originates from, and I have to say I’m pretty happy. Both to see Japan, and to leave Korea as Korea has been kind of a drag. More on that in another article, but to sum it up, the job and benefits are great, but the country, people, and largely the food do not suit me. But I’m satisfied: I’ve met plenty of great people here and learned a lot about myself. I’m just happy to be getting to the relative beauty and politeness of Japan, and see some friends that I’ve had there for awhile.

The rest of my plans thus far are pretty tentative, but the current plan goes somewhat like this: I’ll spend three or so months in Japan, going to at least Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo (if not more), then head to Taiwan, Hong Kong, maybe Vietnam (if I bother to get a visa for it, which is a somewhat annoying requirement), maybe Laos or Cambodia, but then definitely Thailand and down to Singapore.

After that, the current plan is to head back to the place where I’ve decided I want to get a residence permit and branch off from there in the future. I’ll espouse more on which country that is in another article! For now, I wonder: can you guess?

If you’re asked a negative question such as “Don’t you like it?” and you say “No”, this most probably means you don’t like “it”. But because of how inherently confusing this structure is, we often go on to clarify our answer: instead of saying “No”, we often say “No, I don’t” just to make super sure the person understands which way we lean. If we were asked “Don’t you like it?” and we said “Yes”, that would most likely mean we did like whatever “it” is (but of course, to clarify, we’d probably instead say “Yes, I do”).

Most Asian languages are the complete opposite of this. In Korean, Japanese, and other Asian and even non-Asian languages, saying “Yes” means you agree with the sentiment of whatever was said, regardless of whether it was positively or negatively worded. If the person didn’t like “it”, then in response to “Don’t you like it?”, they would simply say “Yes.” The asker asked if she didn’t like it, and that’s what the answerer agrees with.

Let’s do one more example to make the difference even clearer. If I say “No class today?”, and there was no class, an English speaker’s response would probably be “No”, as in “No, there is no class today.” However, a non-English speaker would most likely respond to the question “No class today?” with “Yes.” In response to “No class today?”, saying “No” would mean “No, there actually is class today.”

Having moved to Korea several months ago for my job, I’ve made some observations about teaching English in Korea that I feel worth sharing. I teach 3rd through 6th grade at five different elementary schools in Gochang, a small city inside of Jeollabuk-do, and after having a few months of teaching under my belt, I feel I’m in a good spot where I can offer some advice for starting teachers to get their semester off on the right foot. Let’s start off with some tips to keep in mind for planning your lessons with these crazy kids.

Your Lessons

English should be fun: Don’t add to everyone’s stress levels by making learning English a daunting task; realize that many students will feel discouraged or uninterested in English through no fault of your own, and simply focus on making lessons fun by incorporating games, songs, or activities where everyone gets to participate and feel like they learned something. Extra points if you can make it engaging by choosing songs the kids are already fond of, or making team competition games a frequent part of your lessons (and who knows, maybe throw a League of Legends reference in there now and then).

Use the free and often underutilized textbook materials: Don’t forget about using the activities and flashcards in the back of the textbook if they fit your lesson, even if they’re about a different topic from the one you’re teaching that day. Even if they’re not intensely relevant, you can always use them for review. I found plenty of flashcards, images, and activities there and they were incredibly applicable to my lessons.

Be willing to improvise: Because it will probably happen a lot. The coteacher steps out when you need classroom management the most, the projector stops working, or the kids are at way too low a level for your planned lesson. Being willing and able to modify your lesson on a moment’s notice if the need should arise is at the top of the list of useful skills for this job.

Learn about your students: You may be the only one who asks these incredibly pressured students about their daily schedule, or sympathizes with them for being so busy (as Korean children and teenagers tend to be). If you combine this with calling them by name, they could very well learn to really respect you. Calling a student by name can also help with classroom management.

Don’t take challenging students’ behavior personally: If a student is being challenging (note: not “meddlesome” or “bad”, as these words can often make you feel negatively toward the student), don’t take it personally. They would try to act out with anyone so long as they thought they could get away with it. Korean students are pushed very hard in all aspects of their lives, and are often pressured to pretend things like free time or the opposite sex don’t exist in favor of studying harder. Teachers and adults here regularly forget (or choose to ignore) that they’re growing kids just like we all once were, so these stressed students may try to act out whenever they think they can.

Memrise: Used all the time during any stage of learning Korean, or any other language, for that matter. Using Memrise is like using flashcards, but a lot more beneficial since it utilizes not just repetition, but spaced repetition. That means it checks how long ago you learned a word and reminds you to revisit the word at a time when you’re most likely to be about to forget it. It often has (user-created!) mnemonic devices to help aid the recall process even further. I wholeheartedly recommend Memrise to anyone who’s learning any language. You can even create your own deck to help other users practice! In fact, here’s the deck my friend made to coincide with what you learn from Korean Made Simple, which I’ll talk about in a few bullets.

Dongsa: The Android and iOS versions are the equivalent of its website. It’s an incredibly useful site like Verbix (though Verbix has the Romanizations on the main page if that’s important to you, and also has far more languages available), and can be used on the go to type in an unfamiliar infinitive verb and have it conjugated for you, even if it’s irregular! One thing that Dongsa does have over Verbix is that, since it focuses solely on Korean, when you click on a conjugation, it tells you why the verb is conjugated that way! The value of this can’t be underestimated, of course.

Talk to Me in Korean podcast: Used from the very beginning. They have beginner and intermediate lessons, and their content is quite good! Their podcast is very helpful but also sometimes 10-20 minutes long, much of which is very fluffed up with lots of English conversation between the teachers. Now, though it is extremely helpful, I must say that, depending on how familiar you are with learning languages, it’s sometimes much faster to download their lesson .pdfs and learn them on your own, or maybe just fast-forward through the podcast past the fluff. Besides this, though, I definitely recommend the TTMIK community, as they’re a lovely and helpful bunch of people and will answer any Korean language or cultural questions you have!

Korean Made Simple: Great resource to teach incredibly useful vocabulary and grammar construction. This can be used from the beginning, and was made by a guy who learned Korean himself, so is quite familiar with the process of learning Korean.

LingQ: Used to start learning words, though given the occasional irregularities in Korean spacing of words, it can sometimes be less useful than for other languages. However, this can be used from the very beginning! LingQ is a fantastic site that allows you to hover your cursor over words in their different language lessons and stories and see the meaning. When you feel comfortable with a word, you mark it as known and move on. This is also the tool that gives me those nifty, auto-updated language badges on the right sidebar.

Hello everyone! Today I have a guest post for you, one written by Tongue-Twisting Girl, a fellow blogger and language learner. She is an advocate for learning languages through smartphone apps, and has some recommendations for some good ones! Take it away, girl!

Mobile devices have their own share of benefits to human beings, which includes making learning an interactive and engaging process. Given mobile’s ability to access a myriad of resources online, smartphones have now become an acceptable educational trend that has transcended many different forms. In the United States alone, more and more college students are using their smartphone for learning purposes, spending an average of 3.3 hours daily for mobile learning on their handsets.

Thus, learning a new language on your smartphone has been made easier, so long as you are equipped with the right information about to best do it. How can you enhance your vocabulary and language skills through your mobile device?

Get the right apps
As the often-used adage goes: “there’s always an app for that.” When it comes to learning a new language or developing your skills, there’s usually an application for it. But, there are thousands of mobile apps out there that offer the same things. So, how can you distinguish an effective and suitable educational app for you? Here are some recommendations:

Having an international data plan can be extremely useful if you travel abroad often, but not everyone can afford one. T-Mobile indeed offers an unlimited-data-internationally plan (albeit it’s slow), but it costs about $60/month. So what about the rest of us? One could try and rely on free wifi hotspots around the globe if they wished, but my preference while on the move is to be able to find it much more reliably than that!

That’s where several applications for your phone and computer come in. Meet Instabridge and Wifi Free, two apps created to solve this problem. They work by storing user-submitted SSID’s for networks and their passwords in a database and making them accessible to you. You can browse these wifi connections via a map, and sort them by those closest to you. The database for both applications is already pretty sizable, especially in larger cities like Amsterdam and Seoul, but some may wish to make it even bigger; that’s where you can come in! If you want to help bolster the database, you can only add the SSID and its password to the database if you are currently connected to it, which keeps the database free of fake passwords. The establishments offering the wifi are supposed to not mind you having it for them to be added, but how much that is enforced is dubious. Still, if you don’t mind connecting to places who normally would let you if you were a customer of theirs, these apps (and those related to them) are for you.

There’s a new Kickstarter campaign going on, and I’m excited to see what becomes of it in the coming month. This campaign is the BauBax travel jacket, a jacket with 15 travel-specific features in one, including things like a built-in iPad pocket, passport pocket, phone pocket, eye mask, inflatable neck pillow, gloves, and much more. It’s already way beyond its desired funding of $20,000 (the campaign is at $3,831,413 at the time of this post), and is incredibly promising in its rewards.

If you’re a traveler like me, you’ll hopefully see the value in something so tremendously useful! There are four different styles for the jacket (sweatshirt, windblazer, bomber, and blazer), and several different colors, so its appearance is flexible, too. In a practical sense, no more would you have to gather your items scattered in your backpack and set them in the security bins (other than your laptop, of course); all of these items would be able to be plucked right from out of your pockets!

Not only this, but you’re able to get a pretty good discount ($160 instead of $200+ for the windblazer or bomber, for example, and that includes shipping) by supporting the Kickstarter now rather than waiting until the project is fully in fruition this November, which is when your jacket is expected to be shipped if you preordered one. I support the idea so much that I’m getting two of them. Here are a few pictures from the campaign: